Yeah like I said, the priest talent From Darkness, Comes Light gives you a 15% chance to proc a free instant cast flash heal when you cast certain spells, including smite (which she should be casting to build her atonement stacks). So that is not a red flag per se depending on her talents.

You should actually check the logs before making assumptions and saying people here don't understand priest talents. She's using Mindbender and Divine Insight (on the kill and on the longest tries).

Actually her logs aren't as bad as on the original post and the easiest way of handling it would be indeed going with 3 healers so she can use Heal and GHeal (and Atonement) and be more efficient. Most of the damage there doesn't have to be healed right away, people are usually not in immediate danger of dying so there is no reason to spam FH or even PoH if she can't afford it.

You should actually check the logs before making assumptions and saying people here don't understand priest talents. She's using Mindbender and Divine Insight (on the kill and on the longest tries).

Actually her logs aren't as bad as on the original post and the easiest way of handling it would be indeed going with 3 healers so she can use Heal and GHeal (and Atonement) and be more efficient. Most of the damage there doesn't have to be healed right away, people are usually not in immediate danger of dying so there is no reason to spam FH or even PoH if she can't afford it.

I actually did check the logs, don't assume that I assumed >.> I did mention that she was specced into Mindbender currently..also logs were posted later in the thread, people just automatically assumed flash heal = bad. I also listed other reasons why she may be underperforming a bit.

I had also suggested 3 healing, but I agree w/the OP that it isn't necessary for a variety of reasons.

if you dont mind, i went through armory of your priest (spied through logs)

ARMORY:
- glyph of holy nova - holy nova is never used by your priest - why glyphing it?
- glyph of holy fire - your priest didnt use holy fire at all during the kill fight - why glyphing it?
- reforging mastery to haste (while having spirit below 7,5k = very low) - this is very surprising choice, is it for more flash spam or going for the renew break point? for a disc priest, when itemizing, it is very important to remember how which stat affects which spell.
and if reforging out of mastery, why enchanting into mastery?
- picking talent divine insight over pi when reforging out of mastery, i find it a bit confusing

your priest did more healing with renew (non-glyphed) then with prayer of healing.
poh is the most powerful discipline aoe spell - it not only heals but also stacks divine aegis - powerful, recently buffed bubbles on all targets hit with poh (crucial - poh is group-wide not raid-wide so groups have to be set properly, not a problem on 10man)

usually logs of a disc priest have da topping list, poh on the second place.

* overhealing - good (!) for disc priest, if high on poh low on da - it means that priest spammed poh on healthy raid to stack da. if priest can do it and does not complain on mana, then its good.
your priest has like none overhealing at all - remember that discipline is proactive spec that stacks some defense first, before damage comes. overhealing for disc is not the same thing as it is for other healing classes.

* archangel - built-in and NEVER used on the kill. This is a cd giving your priest like +25% to all healing done with short cd. your priest ignores it completely.
it is very easy to stack using just holy fire (instant) on cd, priest can macro hf to to picking tanks target so doesnt have to even change targets for it, really, is there any excuse not to ever use it?

* cascade - talented and NEVER used on the kill.

perhaps your priest should try playing holy? spamming pom, renew, ignoring atonement and not being proactive, not preparing for incoming damage at all - sounds so much more like holy then disc playstyle for me.

I remember trying to do Stone Guard with an undergeared and inexperienced team. It was hell for healers. People taking unnecessary damage, overloads going off when they shouldn't, people standing in Amethyst pools for two or more ticks before moving their slow ass, melee and ranged standing there with jasper chains stacking the debuff constantly ticking damage, the tanks both getting ganked so hard that sparing one heal for raid meant falling way behind on the tank. I completely empathize with your priest feeling panicked and having to resort to the fastest heals. Stone Guard is all about the tanks executing overloads perfectly and the raid dancing perfectly. I see a lot of unnecessary damage in your logs, particularly with jasper chains and melee. Ultimately, your Priest needs to stop panick healing and start utilizing heals efficiently, stack DA before the pull, use PoH, Spirit Shell, cascade, and Atonement.

One thing you can try to relieve the pressure is to assign healing. You on main tank and group 1, the priest on off tank and group 2.

Have your priest maximize borrowed time during tank healing: shield->pom->renew->penance->heal/gheal
Maximize borrowed time with raid healing: shield->renew->renew->renew/poh
Use spirit shell before overloads.

I feel borrowed time and renew are underutilized by many disc priests as a raid heal. Renew crits proc DA which is now 50%, renews get an extra tick depending on haste. Atonement as well for filler healing, and Cascade is a must its just that good.

Something I have always loved about healing in this game that I don't like in other games.

It's choice based, you will have your cooldowns for bigger more important situations IE: Spirit Shell for Predictable AOE damage, PW:S for rapture/tanks, Divine Hymn for boss AOE.

But from normal damage in encounters it's choice based. YOu will know what works best by trying them, it's based on your regen/cost of spell and how much really honestly needs to be healed and how quickly.

Reasons I am glad they added raid finder, for newer players to learn how to use spells properly in raids without having the easy mode of heroics/dungeons to glide through. Raid finder at least requires SOME nature of decision making in specific events where you have to know what will be most beneficial to cast based on the situation.

Something I have always loved about healing in this game that I don't like in other games.

It's choice based, you will have your cooldowns for bigger more important situations IE: Spirit Shell for Predictable AOE damage, PW:S for rapture/tanks, Divine Hymn for boss AOE.

But from normal damage in encounters it's choice based. YOu will know what works best by trying them, it's based on your regen/cost of spell and how much really honestly needs to be healed and how quickly.

Reasons I am glad they added raid finder, for newer players to learn how to use spells properly in raids without having the easy mode of heroics/dungeons to glide through. Raid finder at least requires SOME nature of decision making in specific events where you have to know what will be most beneficial to cast based on the situation.

Your holy fire and penance should be on CD, even if she is assign for tank healing. This works amazing on Heroic Stone guard and similar encounters, where your dmg is buffed meaning your attonement is stronger. With the 5.1 on the way, Attonemet will be even more vilable with it's 40 yard range. It feels good bringing 10+ milion dmg to encounter while toping healing. Why would someone choose otherwise? If you are wasting Spirit shell and not using Archangel (acording to her logs) then you fail to utilise disc specc, simple as that.

disc really is the only class that can make up for other peoples mistakes. i whole heartedly believe that, but only at higher gear / spirit levels. the use of spirit shell and PoH spamming mitigates so much damage to people "standing in the fire"

at lower gear levels you gotta know the mechanics to get the best from disc. when and where damage comes from. playing catch-up with disc really isnt good. if he / she prefers to heal people up rather than mitigate the damge, roll holy.

its not a criticism, its jsut an option. some people are better at one spec than another.

group make up can play havoc with disc too. make sure the melee and tanks are in the same group, so PoH hits them all. if there are people spread out all over the place, position themselves in the "middle" and target her/himself so that it covers a wide distance. more gear (more gear with spirit on) and tweaking tactics can see a bit boost in performances.

sometimes there jsut isnt that much to heal. if people dont take damage, then healing numbers will be low. if deaths are occuring due to other people failing, then look closer at raidleading problems

edit: also, use the tailoring cloak enchant and reforge to mastery, not haste

Have your priest maximize borrowed time during tank healing: shield->pom->renew->penance->heal/gheal
Maximize borrowed time with raid healing: shield->renew->renew->renew/poh
Use spirit shell before overloads.

I feel borrowed time and renew are underutilized by many disc priests as a raid heal. Renew crits proc DA which is now 50%, renews get an extra tick depending on haste. Atonement as well for filler healing, and Cascade is a must its just that good.

Unless they changed it, I believe penance doesn't consume borrowed time, so imo you should do shield->penance->pom->renew->heal/gheal, that is if you are using renew. I am not on my disc priest unless I got nothing else to do and got the mana to spare. I went out full mastery & crit, but mostly mastery, reforging haste to mastery or crit. Instant 100k absorbs, more if my trinket from will of the emperor procs are pretty decent imo

some of this is a bit of personal preference, but i'm a pretty experienced priest healer as holy and disc.

Well first I will point out that 7.7k spirit is pretty low spirit to have for a priest for raiding and will contribute towards her going oom. Otherwise it is her choice of spells and how she uses them.

I personally would really advise against her using power word: shield as often as she has (to the point of using it off CD on 1 target throughout the fight which is every 15 seconds (24 total)) it is a big mana cost where she could have spent that mana on something else (best case scenario she used 15,555 mana (inner will used) on each of them worst 18,300 mana (inner fire used) used (minimum total of 373,320 mana used on shields or maximum total of 439,200 mana)). The paladin should be keeping resonable amounts of mitigation on the tanks and with using 3 healers she should in no way be needing to shield for the damage.

She is under-using prayer of healing, she cast it once on this fight and I would believe you would have had plenty of aoe damage on your raid given the set up of your boss. and for the overloads. I cant even really stress how key this spell is to playing holy/disc.

And she isn't using heal, this is a great filler spell and should be used as much as possible to be more efficient on mana when she can afford to (your 3 healing so I dont see why she cant).

She didn't use her mindbender however from what I can see (doesnt show on her damage done)

otherwise she is doing fine imo for your progression, its only really a matter of learning fights, which will come while you raid.

Anyway looking at her armory:

I mentioned the spirit already, its really low I raid as a disc priest with over 11k spirit unbuffed and I still want more. she should look into getting better gear (the engi dragonling trinket is awesome for starting out 600 spirit mastery and haste is great) the trinkets are the major problem, as well as the non spirit items (she is managing to reforge into 1.5k spirit). spirit on chest is also a nice boost to spirit, and changing the green gem on chest and orange one in belt both to energised rivers heart (or perfect equivalent) would be better. and shoulder enchant helps.

Haste is good for holy so she should keep that up.

talents (im looking at holy as on logs i looked at she was holy), well as holy i would take divine insight over power infusion as its really really nice for holy.

glyphs, reflecting shield glyph is not something you would ever use for pve when there are other throughput ones you can choose lightwell for 2 more charges and renew glyph are far superior.

shield glyph is also bad to use as holy, as like i said earlier you shouldnt really need to use pw: shield at all. personally i would choose renew/lightspring/lightwell glyph as my ideal glyphs while using divine insight, prayer of mending if im not using divine insight.

for disc

i personally use power infusion, its a really strong CD, but other talents on this tier are still good.

for glyphs she should really ditch holy nova, glyph of prayer of mending or smite are so much better.

I saw people had said she is also reforging to haste for disc earlier in this thread, mastery in 10 man is really the way to go (mastery > crit > haste). spirit of course is still as valuable as it is for holy, disc does actually get more regen from it due to rapture.

she should also really make good use of atonement and archangel, they are really nice and atonement is getting stronger in 5.1.

other than this, flash heal still isnt something to spam or use too often given her talent choices.

and ofc prayer of healing and spirit shell are amazing in this spec, spirit shell/diving aegis/prayer of healing should have a lot of usage.

Spirit to 13k at least, mastery and int. Reforge crit and haste into mastery.

Disc has two modes:

Raid healing and Tank healing.

For raid healing you want only Power Infusion. No other talent is viable, you want mindbender or solace but I recommend mindbender. You should have hte glyph of holy fire. Then this is what you do. You stack archangel like this: PWS-->penance-->holyfire--> smite --> PoHx3 -> PWS-> penance-> holyfire. The idea is you stack evangelism pop archangel, cast cascade then either 1xPWS+4xPoH or spirit shell (using power infusion if available) and stack it with poh on both groups. Use PoM on CD if there is constant ticking damage. Use Inner Focus on CD with a PoH. If you have mindbender you also have to remember to use it preferably outside spirit shell. If you have solace you need to fit in solace casts whenever you are stacking archangel. For disc there are is no healing downtime, so the best time to use solace is after archangel expires when you are restacking it, since that is the period when your healing is at its low point. You need to be building absorption stacks all the time, even when the raid is full health. Try to keep alive any aegis you built while healing people. If your mana regen is not very good then do it with the minimum possible number of PoH casts.

For tank healing, I strongly recommend divine insight and FDCL. You should have the glyph of holy fire. The sequence is nearly the same PWS-->penance-->holy fire-->smite x3 --> pop archangel --> heal the tank. Flash should be FDCL or emergencies only. Pop spirit shell on CD with archangel and spam gheals on both tank until you hit the cap then PoH both groups until it ends targeting it on the tanks. Your tank healing sequence is penance on the boss on CD, holy fire on the boss on CD, PWS on the tank on CD, fill in with heal/smite/gheal and FDCL flashes. Use PoM effectively by casting it when there is a secondary damage source or when the tank is at full health. Use cascade when you have archangel up.

Effective use of cascade means that you try to cast it on an injured target JUST before big raid damage happens (e.g. jade shards on stoneguards or an explosion). The brunt of the healing done by cascade on a spread out raid occurs 3-8s later. If your raid is relatively stacked up all the time on 10man then divine star is also competitive.

The idea with disc raid is to build either a large aegis stack or a large SS stack before raid damage spikes, using archangel to boost your output. You should always time SS with archangel, even if it means delaying archangel. I recommend staying in inner will and switching to inner fire only when you activate spirit shell.

This is a basic gameplay, which will produce results, but tbh right now disc has a higher skill cap than other healer specs. You can produce great results with it after the buffs, but you really need to know what you are doing and you must understand the damage pattern very well. It is possible to mess up really badly with disc.

Flash heal spamming is not viable right now. There are places where spamming a few flash heals is good (e.g. Gara'jat spirit realm), but not on stoneguards normal. If you have to cast flash heal there you have done a terrible job as disc.

In my opinion, you have to be much more aggressive with your PoH. It should be top of that list every time. A tip is to keybind PoH in your healing addon (HealBot, VuhDo etc.) so you can cast it on different groups more easily/faster.